


Slow Your Breath Down

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [32]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family, Family Approval, First Time, Fluff, Kissing, Love, Reunions, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 12:23:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18969226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: "Are you sure?"Three words betraying how much he cared for her, and she answered with three more."I love you."





	Slow Your Breath Down

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all...I've had part of this fic written for a long while now, and this finally seemed like the right time to release it. I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I did writing it!

_“I, Arya Stark, in the name of Daenerys Targaryen, true heir to the Iron Throne, sentence you to die. In the name of Ned Stark, Catelyn Stark, and Robb Stark, I sentence you to die. In the name of Tommen Baratheon, Margaery Tyrell, and Loras Tyrell, I sentence you to die. In the names of all the lives that have been lost because of your actions, I sentence you to die.”_

 

Arya startled awake with a gasp.

 

She breathed carefully, inhaling and holding it and then exhaling as slowly, as quietly as she could, so as not to wake Gendry beside her. Her breath clouded in front of her, cold even in their tent, in their furs, with their arms around each other and Nymeria at their heads. At Arya’s sharp breath, she lifted her head and sniffed her hair. Arya reached up and stroked her ear reassuringly, and a moment later the direwolf settled again.

 

They were in the North, only days from Winterfell now. Lyanna Mormont and Tormund Giantsbane had met them with the North army in the Neck. With four thousand Unsullied at their back and the additional Northerners, they were moving slower than ever. But the snow beneath their feet grew thicker every day and the sun gave less and less warmth the further they went.

 

Gendry was having a difficult time with the cold, she could tell; he was shivering in his sleep, despite the furs draped over them and their combined body heat, not to mention Nymeria curled close. He didn’t complain though; he was stronger than most other Southerners.

 

She watched him for a few minutes, counting his breaths by the hand she had rested on his chest. This happened almost every night, her waking with a gasp and then watching him until she fell back asleep, or until the sun began peeking over the horizon and it was time to get moving again. The nightmare wasn’t always the same – this wasn’t the first time she had dreamed of the moment before she put Needle through Cersei’s neck, but it was more often Sansa screaming as their father was forced to kneel before the citizens of King’s Landing, or of the commotion at the Twins the night her mother and brother were murdered. Dreams she hadn’t had in so long, since before the Faceless Men did their best to make her like them. Still more common was a memory woken by all the others: the Waif slashing angrily at her thigh and shoving a torch at her, forcing Arya to dodge one or the other. She’d dodged the knife, and suffered the fire.

 

Gendry still didn’t know about that. After showing him where the Faceless Men cut her open, she hadn’t been brave enough to show him the rest. He wouldn’t mind the scars, she knew that, but he would want to know the stories behind them, and she would tell him as soon as he asked. She had promised to, when she’d gotten him back. She would not break that promise.

 

She didn’t notice the change in his breathing until his hand came up to cover hers. She realized she was staring into blue eyes when he said her name, voice barely audible.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered back. “Go back to sleep.”

 

He frowned, but didn’t say anything else. He only leaned forward to catch her lips in a slow kiss, seemingly drawing the tension right out of her body. She relaxed into him until her head was on his chest over his heart, eyes closed and listening to the steady beating of it. 

 

His heartbeat was much more effective at lulling her to sleep than simply watching him breathe was.

 

**

 

Gendry sat ramrod straight in the saddle as they rode through the gate, his horse half a step behind Arya’s. She only saw it out of the corner of her eye as Jon swung her out of her own saddle, hugging her warmly. “They’re calling you The Little Wolf now,” he informed her. “Travelling the country, freeing castles, capturing and killing Lannisters…I know you admire the women of legend, but you’ll be one of them, I reckon.” His eyes widened slightly at the sight of Nymeria at her side. “Especially with that one.” Ghost had already bounded forward and was now sniffing cautiously at the other direwolf. They watched as Nymeria gave a delighted yip and bowled him over, playing in the snow like pups.

 

“As long as there are people to tell the story when all is said and done,” Arya answered. She looked around to see Gendry still on his horse. “Come down, you,” she said, holding out her hand until he dismounted and took it. “Jon, this is Gendry. I told you about him before.”

 

Jon said nothing of their joined hands, only smiled warmly. “She spoke quite fondly of you, last I saw her.”

 

Gendry was tense next to her, but he returned the smile and said, “She speaks highly of you as well. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace.”

 

“Come,” Jon said, “the others want to see you as well.” He paused to allow Tormund to engulf him in an enormous bear hug, slapping each other’s backs, so Arya led Gendry to the hall. As she pushed open the doors with one hand, he made to let her other go. She held fast. A moment later, she was grateful that she had, because her knees buckled under her and she might have fallen if Gendry wasn’t quick to steady her.

 

Sansa was beaming at her from the table at the head of the room, hands clasped in front of her in some semblance of control. Beside her sat Lady Stoneheart, which Arya had expected. It was the boy – the _man_ – on her sister’s other side that stole the breath from her lungs and made her cling to Gendry for balance.

 

There were no Northern lords in the room at the moment, another thing to be grateful for. The only eyes watching as Gendry guided her to the table were her family’s and those of Brienne of Tarth, ever at Sansa’s back. “Welcome to Winterfell,” she heard Sansa say to Gendry as she reached out to accept the hand that Bran held out to her.

 

“You’ve grown,” was all she could think to say.

 

Bran smiled. “So have you.”

 

She felt her own face break open into a grin, tears welling up in her eyes. “How did you get here?”

 

“You won’t believe half of it.”

 

“I bet that I will,” she responded, and climbed right over the table to throw her arms around his neck, landing half in his lap and causing his chair to roll back a little bit. Bran laughed. The sound of it rolled over her, bringing more warmth to her bones than the fires burning around the room ever could.

 

**

 

Arya snuck Gendry into her old room that night, despite his protests. “Your sister will have me gelded,” he insisted, “and your brothers will want to behead me.”

 

“No, they won’t,” Arya said patiently, closing the door behind them and deadbolting it for good measure. “Jon told me a long time ago that if I find someone I love, and who loves me, then he will never let anyone take it from me. Bran seems to have other things on his mind and Sansa…well, she’s always disapproved of my behavior.”

 

“I don’t think your brother’s kindness will extend to someone finding me in your bed.”

 

“Do you think he doesn’t know that we’ve been sharing a bed for most of the war already?” Arya laughed a little at the look on Gendry’s face. “He isn’t particularly thrilled with me, but he is of the mind that if I’m happy, he won’t stop it. He just doesn’t want to see too much,” she added cheekily to watch Gendry go red.

 

They spoke for a long time, the four of them, after Gendry excused himself to the forge with the promise to see her at dinner. For the first time in a long, long time, he hesitated to kiss her, with all of her family watching. In the end, he awkwardly kissed her hand and bowed his head to the rest of them, blushing furiously. “He needn’t be so shy about it,” Bran had commented. “It’s no secret that you love each other.” He knew everything, it seemed, of her travels. He knew things that had happened after she had taken Riverrun, things that Sansa and Jon couldn’t have possibly known, or told him. It was unnerving, at first, to be told her own stories, but it made it easier somehow; here was someone who understood everything she did without needing to be told. Even if Bran was the one to inform Jon and Sansa that Arya had not slept in a bed alone for many months now. Her little brother seemed to take a lot of amusement in watching her try to explain to Jon and Sansa exactly _why_ that was.

 

In the end, Jon held up a hand and said tiredly, “Your choices are your own, just _please_ be discreet about it.”

 

“There isn’t much to see,” Gendry pointed out, though he didn’t sound bitter. He was so utterly respectful of her that it made Arya’s heart ache, sometimes. She had grown up far too quickly, and came to believe that men were harsh, rough creatures. It couldn’t be helped, but then Gendry came back and did everything to prove her wrong. His tenderness was a shock to her system every time he touched her, taking her hand or combing his fingers through her hair slowly so that they never snagged. He, in turn, made her gentle. He made her better.

 

And oh, but she loved him for it all.

 

He shrugged out of his clothes until all that was left with his smallclothes anyways, just like she knew he would, and settled underneath the furs. She felt his eyes on her as she shuttered the window and tended to the fire before pulling the grate back over it. It left the room coated in dim, soft light, but she lit a candle all the same and set it on the table next to the bed and undressed too. She forewent the soft, long shirt she would normally put on and climbed into bed to lay on her side and watch Gendry watching her.

 

She wondered if he felt it too, the shift between them. He wasn’t looking away from her, even though the clingy smallclothes she wore showed more skin than he had ever seen. Carefully, she reached out to smooth his hair back from his forehead. He closed his eyes as she trailed her fingertips back over his cheek, running one down the bridge of his nose and resting it against his lips. He kissed it, a barely-there press of his mouth, and it lit her up inside.

 

“Gendry,” she whispered. She waited for his eyes to open and then, “Do you trust me?”

 

“More than anything,” he answered immediately.

 

“Okay.” She moved closer, until she could feel the heat radiating from his skin, until she could tangle their bare legs together and feel his freezing toes against her ankle. He breathed in sharply, but he didn’t take his eyes off hers, and he didn’t stop her when she rolled up on her elbows above him and came to rest with their foreheads pressed together. It was a little awkward, with her torso twisted up like it was, but she needed to give him a chance to tell her to stop. Gods, she hoped he didn’t tell her to stop.

 

His blue eyes were wide with surprise, confusion, something like hope. “You don’t have to,” he murmured in the scant space between their mouths.

 

She smiled a little, rubbing their noses together. “Have you ever known me to do anything I didn’t want?”

 

Gendry laughed quietly. “No, I suppose not.” He brought a hand up to her hip, thumb brushing a sliver of skin on her waist, and when she didn’t stop him, curled his other arm under her and hauled her the rest of the way on top of him, so that her legs fell open on either side of him and she could prop herself up with an elbow on either side of his head. She could feel every part of him like this, his heartbeat strong and a little fast just under her breast, the rise and fall of his stomach with his breaths, the length of him against the core of her through thin layers. His hand clenched slightly against her hip, fingers curling there, and the other came up to tuck her hair back behind her ear. She leaned into his palm, kissing the center of it, and then lowered her head to bring their mouths together.

 

They kissed for a long time, until their mouths were slick and slightly swollen, and then Arya took his bottom lip between her teeth and tugged lightly. Gendry hissed out a breath and his fingers, which had migrated into her hair, pulled. It made her gasp, hips rolling without her permission, and she was shocked to feel him up against her like that, wasn’t expecting the spark of pleasure to shoot through her. She moved again, deliberately this time, and was fascinated when Gendry’s head dropped back with a low noise in his throat. She considered the stretch of skin left in the candlelight for a second, thinking, and then she pressed a kiss behind his ear. A slight movement, and then another press of lips to his jaw. She opened her mouth and kissed him again, and then again, and then set her teeth lightly over his throat and applied the slightest pressure. A long groan was torn from him, the vibration surprising her a little, and pushed up on her elbows again to check on him. “Okay?” she checked.

 

“ _Yes,”_ Gendry breathed. He kissed her so hard their teeth clacked together uncomfortably, but his arm came around her waist and he was pushing up with his other until they were sitting up and he could tilt her head down the way he wanted to. She shivered, but it had nothing to do with the furs falling away from them and everything to do with his hand creeping up her back, pushing the undershirt she had kept on up. She had to wrench away to breathe, to stare at him wide-eyed. “Arya?” he said, eyes shuttering a little.

 

She swallowed, found her words, lost them again, did the only thing she could think to do and pulled the shirt off completely, throwing it aside. He was the one staring now, eyes tripping from her face to her chest to her stomach and back again, like he didn’t know where to look. She let him, smoothing her fingers through his hair for as long as it took for him to settle. She had been naked in front of others before, but no one ever looked at her like this. Like she was something to be treasured. The Faceless Men were clinical. Gendry was _awed_. He touched the scars below her navel, smoothing his thumbs over them like he had the first time she had showed him the proof of what they took from her. He raised his eyes to her breasts, to the burn left behind like a brand from the Waif, and kissed her there, over her heart.

 

“You…” He cupped her face in his hands and touched their foreheads together again. “You are so beautiful.”

 

Gods help her, she believed him. “Touch me,” she murmured, taking one of his wrists and laying his fingers over the burn. He rested his hand on her breast for a second, just watching her, and then he squeezed tentatively and the breath rushed from her body. She crushed their mouths together again, hands curled into fists on his shoulders, kissing him fiercely, moving her whole body against him so that she could grind their hips together and feel him groan into her mouth.

 

It took a long moment to gain control, and then longer again because when she pulled away to yank his smallclothes off of his hips, he kissed down her neck and sucked her nipple into his mouth, rolling it between his teeth curiously. She wasn’t proud of the whimper that it drew from her, but Gendry looked darkly up at her and did it again. She pushed him to his back and finally got their remaining clothes off. When she settled on top of him again, skin to skin with nothing between them, it felt like relief. His length slid against her easily, and she was poised to take him inside her when he stopped her with two fingers under her chin, tilting her head up to look at him.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Three words betraying how much he cared for her, and she answered with three more.

 

“I love you.”

 

He smiled. “Just – hold on a moment.” He urged her up again so that he could sit up against the wall and tug her forward. She was ready to settle back down when his fingers brushed against her. She jolted in shock. “Let me…I just want to make sure,” and then one of his fingers was tucked up _inside her_ and she whined into his neck. She’d never expected this, never thought that fucking was meant to be pleasurable for a woman too, but he was drawing back and adding another finger and the meat of his hand rested against the bone above where his fingers were and it was…it was…

 

“ _Please.”_  

 

Two fingers weren’t even comparable to the heavier weight of his cock when she sank down onto him, hands in his hair and lips against his forehead, his hands spanning her waist, guiding her down. It hurt, a little, but the pain was nothing against the overwhelming connection she felt when their hips fit snugly together. One or both of them was shaking, she couldn’t tell. She could only breathe through the slight pressure and then gasp when Gendry twitched underneath her.

 

“Sorry, sorry—”

 

Arya laughed breathlessly. “No, it’s good, it’s…” She raised up a little on her knees, came back down, circling a little at the end experimentally. Gendry’s mouth fell open so she did it again, reveling in the drag of him inside her.

 

“Arya, this isn’t—” He moaned into her neck. “I’m not – I haven’t, I won’t…”  
  
“It’s okay,” Arya whispered, “it’s okay, you can, I want you to – _unh._ ” He’d planted his feet and rolled up into her, matching her movement. His hands were everywhere, on the curve of her ass, the nape of her neck, in her hair, on her waist, pinching a nipple and she scraped her nails down his chest in surprise.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he whispered, and when she tensed around him he bit down on her shoulder to muffle his quiet cry, hips jerking once, twice, again and then stilling, holding her right up against him while his whole body tightened. She felt the warmth of it inside her where she was already burning up. _I did that,_ she thought, and she was on a knife-edge of pleasure, trying to tamp it down while holding him through his own.

 

He slumped back against the wall, looked dazed. When Arya made to pull off of him, he shook his head. “No, wait…” With an arm around her waist to keep them joined, he moved so that her legs were wrapped around his waist and they were flush. “Okay, okay, just…” He pressed two fingers against where they were joined and rubbed in little circles until Arya shuddered out a breath and began grinding against him. He was still mostly hard inside of her, and that combined with the friction of his fingers and his mouth against her ear murmuring, “I love you,” over and over again tipped her over some invisible line that she hadn’t known existed. She couldn’t keep her eyes open through the waves crashing over her, tightening her body as she sobbed wordlessly into Gendry’s cheek. It went on forever, prolonged by Gendry’s hand on her back encouraging her to keep rolling against him. And then all her muscles released at once and she collapsed with her forehead on his shoulder, panting harshly. Gendry ran his hand down her back in broad strokes now, bringing her back down until the trembling subsided.

 

It took a minute for her to find the strength to raise her head again and find his eyes. “Okay?” he asked, smiling softly at her.

 

She nodded, wincing a little as he lifted her up so that he slid out of her. She felt his release trickling down her thighs and made a face. Gendry grinned a little and she swatted his arm. “Shut up,” she muttered. Then she drew his face to hers and kissed him, long and slow.

 

“We should clean up a bit,” Gendry mumbled against her lips.

 

Arya shook her head and nudged his nose with hers. “There’s no point,” she told him. “You think we’re not doing that for the rest of the night, you’re an idiot.”

 

Gendry laughed helplessly. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t actually…” He gestured vaguely at his cock, soft and shiny with their combined release. “It takes some time.”

 

Arya considered it, and realized she’d had his _fingers_ inside her and she hadn’t even touched him yet. She smirked a little and reached down to cradle it in her hand. He choked out his next breath, stuttered out a moan when she pulled the skin over the head of it between her fingers. “ _Arya,”_ he gasped, twisting away. “At least a few minutes, please!”

 

She pressed her face to his neck to muffle her laughter. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into his side, burying his face in her hair. She relented, tapping her fingers against his stomach, and for a few minutes neither of them said anything. Then, “I didn’t know it would be like that.”

 

“Like what?” Gendry said sleepily.

 

She thought about the words for a moment. “I didn’t know it would be good for me,” she admitted. “I thought…I thought it was for the man. No one ever told me it would feel…”

 

Gendry cupped her cheek again until she met his eyes. “I think it’ll always be like that for us,” he said softly. “At least, I want it to be.”

 

“Yeah?” Arya whispered.

 

He kissed her. “Yeah.”


End file.
